Sony said last E3 that they wanted to do more for the indie companies and their games, first with their self-publishing, and now they've introduced new tools for indie developers.

Sony has partnered with GameMaker: Studio, a middleware vendor, from YoYo Games and brought MonoGame to the table, giving indie developers more tools to help bring their games to the PlayStation Network. In addition, they've added new solutions for Unity from Unity Technologies for the PlayStation 3 and Vita. They expect Unity access for the PlayStation 4 by April of this year.

"SCE is an immense supporter of the indie movement within the game industry and is constantly collecting feedback on how to make things easier for developers. It became abundantly clear within the development community that these broad sets of tools and specific middleware solutions are in high-demand," Andrew House, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, said in a statement. "We are pleased to provide these powerful tools to developers and add even more flexibility and development options for game developers around the world, and we know that PlayStation gamers will be thrilled to play the games that will come to our platforms as a result of these partnerships."

Even better, GameMaker: Studio tools are free for all SCE-licensed developers. With this solution, several popular indie PC games can now be ported to the PlayStation 4 more easily, such as Hyper Light Drifter, Risk of Rain, and Nuclear Throne.

Sony reports that they have over 100 indie games in development and more than 1,000 licensed self-publishers. With these tools in place, they hope to make the PlayStation platform even more appealing to aspiring developers.